Scallop-size debate expected to have far-reaching implications

Thursday

Dec 11, 2008 at 2:00 AM

By Eliot Baker I&M Staff Writer

How do you ID an adult bay scallop? Hundreds of thousands of dollars – and scallops – hang in the balance as town and state officials plan to convene in Barnstable next month for the first of an expected series of meetings geared toward answering the highly-contentious question.

A tightened statutory interpretation by state chief shellfish biologist J. Michael Hickey – later relaxed in a separate regulation – will be examined as a possible regulatory model by state officials in a public hearing Jan. 6 at the Barnstable Senior Center at to determine how regulators will enforce scallop catches in the future.

In the Oct. 21 statute, Hickey wrote that those scallops with a raised, defined growth ring 10 millimeters from the hinge are considered adults. An emergency regulation passed Nov. 13 expanded the definition to include all scallops 2.5 inches in diameter. Town shellfish biologist Jeff Mercer said the public hearing will help inform state officials on how to proceed.

“The public hearing is to determine the public feeling on how the emergency regulation worked out this year and whether it should be applied in future years,” said Mercer. He will present recommendations on the subject to the Shellfish and Harbor Advisory Board Tuesday at 4:30 p.m. in the Town Annex Building, along with other members of an ad-hoc work group recently created in response to this year’s troubled scallop season.

The traditional interpretation of an adult scallop, one with a “raised, defined, growth ring,” was more vague and thus harder to enforce, said marine superintendent Dave Fronzuto. “Relatively speaking, it’s an enforcement issue,” said Fronzuto. “Every other species in the commonwealth has a gauge: quahogs are one inch thick, oysters are three inches long . . . But what does that (raised, defined growth ring) mean? Two and a half inches was picked because it represented the average size of adults this year from (Mercer’s data). It’s not an arbitrary number. . . Jeff has done a great job giving us the science.”

Fronzuto said it is ultimately a state decision as to what regulatory measures would be adopted. The final interpretation could overlook scallop diameter and the placement of the growth ring altogether and rely on shell thickness or something else entirely if a stronger case is presented to state scientists.

The 10-mm rule’s made off-limits Nantucket’s “nubs,” large-enough-to-eat bay scallops of questionable reproductive maturity, and came at a particularly bad time: one of the worst scallop harvests in recent memory. Nubs are considered seed scallops everywhere else in the commonwealth, said Hickey. Eating one immature scallop could remove thousands of its future progeny from viability, since bay scallops spawn just once. Fishermen believe large nubs are adults and should be harvested as such as they have been for decades, since they’d otherwise die unnecessarily of old age.

While fishermen voiced support for conservation efforts, many struggled to get by immediately following the implementation of 10-mm rule, which essentially grounded the 60-boat scallop fleet for the first week of the season at the beginning of November.

Fronzuto indicated that while it’s not a banner year, career scallopers are getting by and catching their limit in the wake of the 2.5-inch emergency regulation.

“We’ve had 3,500 bushels brought in to the harbor to date,” said Fronzuto. “We had a double-limit boat (10 boxes from two scallopers) in (Tuesday) by 11 o’clock. That said, the last fishermen didn’t get in till 4:30. It’s not a great year, but the 2.5-inch rule opened up a significant number of scallops.”

SHAB member Marina Finch said lower fuel costs have been a lone bright spot this season. Time on the water burns gas, so the longer it takes to fill your five-box-per-person limit, the lower the profits.

“It’s a chore, it’s a full day’s work to get close to the limit,” said Chris Farley, a scalloper and founding member of the ad-hoc committee. “It basically takes an hour a bushel. Those with a double-limit don’t get it (whereas) last year on good days you got your limit by 9 or 10 o’clock. If we had two-and-a-quarter-inch nubs it would help, but the reproduction cycles just didn’t match the season.”

If only scallops came with birth certificates. Like people, bay scallops’ reproductive maturity can’t be easily determined by appearance. A room-full of people over 5’8’’ would not necessarily be full of adults, said Mercer – you’d have to examine their voice levels, body hair, wideness of hips and other characteristics to be sure. Height merely indicates someone’s likelihood of being an adult.

Similarly, not all large scallops are sexually mature. The equivalent of puberty for scallops is a raised, defined growth ring that marks when a seed scallop began growing again once the waters warmed after a winter-induced hibernation period. Scallops generally live less than two years.

If all scallops spawned in the early summer, determining an adult would be simple. They’d all grow to a certain size by winter, stop growing, and then a growth ring would demark resumed growth in the warm summer waters, which trigger spawning.

But nubs are spawned late in summer. They are so tiny when they start to winter that their growth ring the next year can be virtually non-existent. It’s possible they will not have spawned once the fall scalloping season begins, so taking them would be the same thing as taking seed out of the system. It could be likened to putting that entire room of 5’8” people in the Army - you’d risk conscripting some children.

“If a scallop is 2.5 inches, you can’t say for sure it’s spawned, but there is a greater likelihood of it having spawned,” said Mercer.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.

Original content available for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons license, except where noted.
The Inquirer and Mirror ~ One Old South Road, Nantucket, MA 02554 ~ Privacy Policy ~ Terms Of Service